Avsim Cancels Fancon 2009

AVSIM's Board of Directors today voted to cancel the FANCON 2009 event. Due to poor in-advance registrations, the Board concluded that this year's event would not be a viable one. The Board of Directors regrets that this action has to be taken and apologizes to all who have planned to intend. If you have paid for your entry as either an attendee or as an exhibitor, your payment will be refunded in full. We will start issuing those refunds tonight. If you do not receive notice of your refund within the next ten days, please leave a note in the FANCON Forum and let us know. Again, our apologies for the cancellation. Hopefully, there will be a FANCON 2010.

At the same meeting today, the Board of Directors voted to hold our Fall Board of Directors meeting in Chicago over the weekend of October 9th, 10th and 11th. Tentatively, the BOD meeting will be held at the O'Hare Hilton and we will hold our traditional social on Saturday evening, the 10th. We will be posting more details on this as our plans firm up.

X-Plane 9.30 Beta 15 Released

Changes in Beta 15:

Plane-Maker can snap wings OK now

RESET PATH map-button and menu-option now reset the paths of ALL planes… not just yours

Frame-rate counter should run a bit smoother

Ever so slight tuning of the rotor/propeller model

‘Start on Ramp’ option back in the Operations and Warnings window

Should now work with REMOTE for iPhone, even if you are still on an old power PC!

APU n1 saved with the situation and replay

Runway bumps fixed when “runway follows terrain contours” is off

Runways no longer bright at night with shaders on and per-pixel lighting off

Facades drape on sloped ground

App icons look correct on OS X 10.3 and 10.4

Orthophoto distance tuned for anisotropic filtering

72 hz frequency monitors recognized in rendering settings

Text entry into numeric fields improved

Datarefs for PFC equipment are writable

Rotation-speed datarefs for wheels/props/engines won’t go negative

Will we see an RC version or Final soon? What do you think?

Monument Valley Burger

Thanks Redeye/Mark for posting his results on the last Hamburger flight! Be sure to check out his results here [Link].

Be sure to download the flight HERE [Link] which contains these instructions, and all charts/sectionals you need!

Background Monument valley is an area in the Navajo Nation Reservation, which is scattered with sandstone buttes, some reaching over 1,000 feet above the floor below. Located on the Southern Utah and Northern Arizona borders, it is a popular tourist destination and sports horseback rides, camping, hot air balloon rides, and aircraft tours.

You work for a small private company that specializes in airborne tours of Monument valley’s best sights. You are the only pilot for this company of only 3 employees, so as the pilot you must strive to make the experience for your guests unforgivable. This means providing the smoothest flight possible, and the best view possible. You should use things at your disposal, such as tourist maps, and photos and other information about the spot to give the best tour possible. Your company works solely off of word of mouth advertising, and if you don’t provide the best experience possible there are plenty of other pilots who will!

The Goal This is what your company is famous for, it’s “Last Call Tour”. This is right at sunset where the entire valley is lit up with the deep colors of the sun setting into the West, this is where you make your big bucks, after all this only happens once per day!

You can use wither a small single prop aircraft, or a helicopter, your choice, but timing is everything.

You will be taking off from 0V7 – Kayenta Airport. Be sure to check out the airport information for any important information about the airport.

After takeoff, fly just about 3nm mile north of 05UT – Oljato Airport, using heading 335. A total of about 22.5nm from 0V7.

The goal is to arrive to the valley at 8:30 PM local time, right at sunset. This means that depending on the speed of the aircraft you select, you will probably need to give yourself roughly 10 minutes from your wheels leaving the ground to entering the valley. Be sure to allow time for pre-flight checks, taxiing, etc.

After reaching your first point, approx 3nm north of 05UT, you will want to bank South East heading 98 and treat your customers to the best nature has to offer. Fly along this heading for about 9.5nm before exiting the valley and going back to 0V7 using heading 182.

Land safely back at 0V7 before night fall, as VFR navigation is difficult in this situation due to lack of lights and visible landmarks

Recommendations

Mark: Clear Skies X-Plane PluginMuch thanks to Sandy Barbour for producing this Windows version of the original plug-in. There is some issue with fog and the speed at which it ebbs and flows. X-Plane fog is there to reduce visibility and remove items that need drawing, and thus, increase the frame rate in the sim. Sometimes this can be a good thing, but sometimes it can be a pain. Clear Skies just sets the visual distance to 10kms, 20kms or 40kms. Clear Skies is a plug-in that has 2 modes. Select a distance, turns it on and it stays on until you select it again. It will attempt to maintain the visual distance chosen.

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Defog once, which clears the fog once and then leaves x-plane to do whatever it wants to do.

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ClearSkies can also reduce visibility to increase the frame rate to help test aircaft and systems. Clear Skies will not make up for lame hardware that is below the minimum, and it will not make up for people who have settings set higher than their hardware can support. It's handy for screen shots, it's handy for the few minutes after x-plane has loaded and the fog has set in and needs to be pushed back. Results may vary. To install, drop it into the plug-ins folder, in the Resources folder.

Emails

Question from Arthur

hey guys, name is arthur and i would like to personally thank you for the show you put out. A tip of the wing to the hard work you guys do. last episodes review of FSX REX was good enough for me to buy it and it was simply an amazing change to the way i fly. I myself do not fly real airplanes but i am going for my introductory flight in a few weeks! my question to you is, i been a big reader of the Flight simulator magazine and enjoy the flights that they have in the back of the magazine. was hoping you would know a place online that would have these interesting flights or missions. again thank you for all you do.

Suggested Website from Allan

Listening to the flight suggestions in the last episode it's a must to mention www.simtours.net which is a website that specializes in exactly this. It talks about scenic places, famous locations, buildings etc., difficult and dangerous approaches, easter eggs and more. I once flew down to Sydney and saw the fireworks which only happen on New Year eve's for about 20 mins I think - that was pretty cool!

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